New NYCLU report on Rockefeller drug laws

As detailed in this official press release, the New York Civil Liberties Union today released a new report on the impact of the state's Rockefeller Drug Laws. The report's title, "The Rockefeller Drug Laws: Unjust, Irrational, Ineffective," provides a pretty clear sense of some of the report's conclusions. The full report can be accessed at this link, and here is a snippet from the introduction:

This report presents and marshals the empirical evidence that demonstrates New York's mandatory-minimum drug sentencing scheme has failed, utterly, to accomplish its stated objectives. It has not reduced the availability of drugs or deterred their use; it has not made us safer....

The Rockefeller Drug Laws are the Jim Crow laws of the 21st Century. This report includes demographic maps of urban centers throughout the state that depict in bold relief the racial and ethnic bias that informs the state's drug-law policy.-

These findings present lawmakers with a compelling argument for comprehensive reform of the Rockefeller Drug Laws. The argument is based on principles of law and public policy. But ultimately the issue is a moral one.

The report concludes by proposing a paradigm shift toward a public health approach to drug policy. In this new model, prison is a last resort, reserved for the truly violent. The public health approach seeks to reinvest dollars, otherwise spent on prisons, to promote safe and stable communities. In practice, this approach diverts individuals with substance abuse problems from prison to programs that promote and facilitate life success.